People :: “Ceremony ~ Buddha Meet Rock” - Teichiku Records

Both subliminal and severely spiritual in its wondrous awakening into the imaginative ideology and calcified landscapes of historical frequency, came and went a cosmic collective of musicians from the far eastern side of the world led by guitar prodigy Kimio Mizutani in early 1970s Japan. Consisting of a wide range of members and session players, such as Hideaki Takebe, Kiyoshi Tanaka, Naoki Tachikawa, Yusuke Hoguchi, Jun Mizutani and Kimio Mizutani, people explored the bountiful boundaries of their culture with a cerebral approach to improvisation, calculated critique and the almighty atmosphere of chanting dialogue. With a feverishly thriving ecosystem of bands coming out of the early 1970s Japanese underground world of music, People were among an endless scroll of mutually respected colleagues that included Speed, Glue and Shinki, Flied Egg, Flower Travelin’ Band, Strawberry Path and countless other esoteric efforts that bashed the endless expectations of society and its pulverizing politics on its people.

Recorded at Teichiku Suginami Studios in Tokyo at the beginning of the decade, “Ceremony - Buddha Meet Rock” opens with an exceptionally epic rendition of legendary composer David Axlerod’s “Holy Thursday” from his subliminal debut, “Song of Innocence”, which some argue was the very first sample of the arrangers work and from there, totally spirals out of control into this polished yet sophisticated performance of visceral vibrations and holographic horrors of the mind. Led by the label’s A&R Director, Hideki Sakamoto, the concept of the album is vastly left to the eager ears of its listeners, but there was some sort of vision laid out for the album and its stellar collection of musicians. Whether to shock the population into a feral frenzy, or enlighten the ongoing efforts of the decade by exploring, as well as expressing the ancient teachings of the Middle East, the collective hit the studio with an atomic, yet anonymous approach, to a project that still baffles listeners both new and old to this day. 

Both thematic and all around terrifying, the album’s 8 tracks bravely explore this mental exercise that impels the sonic senses with sexless sensations and a borderline hysteric listening experience for anyone that dares to lunge themselves into its Dionysian depths. With numbers like “Shomyo Part 1”, “Flower Strewing”, “Prayer Part 1”, and the album's epic, yet-exhausted-ender, “Epilogue”, spiraling downward into the futuristic fibers of fatality, the band finally crashes into-the-rhetoric rocks just below in an all out explosion of meditative muscle spasms. Summoning Polydor chief Ikuzo Orita’s secret weapon and house guitarist, Kimio Mizutani, arranger Yusuke Hoguchi, and prolific poet Naoki Tachikawa in on the project, recording soon began and one can only imagine the efforts expressed as anatomical airwaves pierce the cosmic catacombs of the clever cave from which the album was conceived. Reported to have gone over budget, the band miraculously added local bird sounds and multiple layers of lysergic jams to finish out the remainder of the project and its shadowy production with ferocious freedom and explosive expressionism in its rawest state.